


The Kingslayer

by Orion_Black16



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:34:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29075676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orion_Black16/pseuds/Orion_Black16
Summary: Life as a witcher begins with much pain, confusion and terror, and it doesn't get any better from there.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon/Original Character(s), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Triss Merigold, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg





	The Kingslayer

I cannot tell you who I once was.

His name, if indeed it was a 'him', eludes me to this very moment like the memories of an ill forgotten dream, blighted out of existence by the first rays of the morning light.

But he had lived a life.

I had lived a life.

Quite a few years in fact, if my foggy rememberings could be trusted.

And then I died.

How? I am not certain, though it matters not anymore. Death had come peacefully enough, with ample regrets to drown me whole.

I was expecting it for time if I do so remember correctly, hence it shouldn't have been much of a surprise when death had finally arrived with her shadowy arms outstretched, beckoning me to return whence I came. Even if the life that I had once lived remained a mystery to me, the dreams of my death could not have been much clearer.

I could still recall the moment when I had closed my eyes for the last time, leaning into the motherly embrace of death. Without light, without the beat of a heart to count the time, I remembered losing myself in the uncertainty of eternity, content that the business of life had finally came to an end.

That was the way a life was supposed to be, how it was supposed to end. Humans were meant to grow old and grey, weary and worn. Gain and lose loved ones, build castles of fortune in their dreams with hopes of living in them one day, only to witness them crumble to dust when age took its toll and they themselves passed away by some malady or another. I had no reason to think it would be much different for me, having lived a long life with enough maturity gained to surpass any unreasonable expectations to live a few more.

Hence the sudden pain that had assaulted my senses no sooner after my death, flaring every minuscule of muscle and nerve to sheer unimaginable agony, startled me more than anything ever had in my life.

It must have been this pain that the life I had once lived became indistinct to me, The memories fading away like letters of a page, eons after it was once printed.

Even the memory of the pain became brittle, whether from being repressed by the trauma it had caused or from being cannibalized by its own self, I do not know. One thing I do know for certain was that whenever I tried to think about it again, a lick of destructive fire would ignite in my consciousness, making me flinch away from the memory in fear, much like a child fascinated with the flame but conscious enough of the pain it would cause if one came near.

However, the surprise that I felt at the sudden unexpected agony that had wrecked my soul, twisted my being and left me on the edges of insanity - what came next stupefied me even more.

I opened my eyes.

As I had said once before, a man tends to expect an end after his death or perhaps a sort of verdict on the deeds committed in the life he had once led. Most however, do not expect to feel the cool trail of sweat running down his bare chest, the smell of the rot and an assortment of chemicals permeating their nostrils, the taste of vomit and salt on his lips and the opening of his eyes to a shuddering gasp echoing from somewhere deep inside his soul. Most men do not expect to wake up from their death in a body not their own, all the while being disturbingly aware of the circumstances they had found themselves in.

Neither had I when I died.

But the perception of awakening, as if from a year long slumber while being strapped to a wooden table obliquely placed with numerous tubes connected to glass tumblers pumping their contents into my blood through the slits in my wrist, chest, pelvis and spinal cord, made me acutely aware that my hopes of leading a peaceful afterlife would have to be left grossly unfulfilled.

Fuck, I observed.

Normally such revelations coupled with my mind frantically trying to adapt to its new surroundings and making a sense of the circumstances it had found itself in, would have been sufficient to drive me to the verges of insanity.

But strangely it didn't.

All I felt at that moment, while being tightly bound with leather straps around my torso, neck, hands and feet was an icy curiosity intermixed with irritable annoyance.

Suppressed emotional response, I mused.

The barest amount of distress that I had felt upon waking up, quickly faded as soon as it had arrived. Where I should have been crying and screaming in distress, trashing against my bonds as those strange multicoloured portions continued to be pumped into my new self, I could only lay there, unmoving with the minuscule measures of idle curiosity tingling my conscious.

"Hmm", The voice that came from my lips was distinctly unknown to me, a bit more baser than the one I remembered possessing. "Where am I?"

The lighting was bad enough that under normal circumstances I would have been quite blind. But my new eyes rapidly compensated for the lack of light, registering several spectra simultaneously, something I had only ever seen through night goggles.

I was in some sort of underground cave turned laboratory it seemed, if the various mixes of tumblers, burners, ovens, test tubes and rotting remains of maimed human corpses spread widely across a dust ridden sparsely lighted hall could be taken into account. Numerous open scrolls, books and parchments were scattered across the laboratory floor with a similarly huge collection deposited neatly on wooden shelves fixed to the wall at the far ends of the chamber. A collection of steel cages hung precariously from the high ceiling with the mortal remains of their prisoners still residing within.

It was bizarre really, but like everything else I had felt since waking up in my new body, the feeling was quickly quenched to a mild surprise at most.

Speaking of my new body, I moved my head as much as the strap around my neck would allow and gazed down upon the new form I had found myself residing in and let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Two hands, two feet, a cock and a pair of balls. All where they were supposed to be.

So no maiming for me then, I signed in relief. A surprise considering the lab mates I find myself surrounded with. Around fifteen similarly placed wooden tables with straps holding their doomed young captives were laid beside me, their backs against the wall. Eight boys and seven girls barely of age, though unlike myself they were all quite dead.

Whatever experimentations I had been subjected to, was carried on them as well though under quite different parameters if the various disastrous results could be taken into consideration.

Grotesque deformation had wrecked their tiny adolescent selves whole with some having numerous tumour like projections bulging from their faces, legs and hands. A few of the girls had their innards strewn from their womb while another few had part of themselves burned to the crisp. A trio of boys to my right had all together melted away from their binds with only their bare bones holding the corpses upright, while a pair to my left had a side of their body swollen to represent a misshapen caricature of an overly muscular men, while the other side stayed the same. Small and bony. However even with the varying degree of results that the experiments had produced on those poor children, almost all of them carried the expressions of the horrific pain they were subjected to in the last moments of their brief lifespan, with their eyes protruding and mouths screaming.

A six-percent success ratio, my mind unhelpfully supplied with my lips pulling to a frown, the earlier amusement now a distant memory.

I looked down upon my new body again, straining against my bonds to see the whole package. No unnatural protrusion or unwanted melting. No maimed body parts or tumour fitted skin. The new body I had found myself in was normal as one could expect of a boy around fifteen, though a bit pale, a little taller, much more muscled and with hair reaching his waist.

Ah yes, I am a teenager now, I noted as an afterthought. Rebirth had de-aged me it seemed, removing quite a few decades from my old self and leaving me on the cusps of adulthood. Now if only I could find a way out of my bonds. . .

At peace with what I had to do in order to earn my freedom, I took a long deep breath and began thrashing against my bonds, sacrificing any shred of pride for a remote chance of escape. I stopped moments later though, sweaty, tired and with hair across my face. Even though old and worn, the straps held against the torment I had subjected them to, refusing to bulge even when I put my newly formed muscles to the task.

Disappointed at my failed endeavor, I spat out black strands of my hair that had found their way into my mouth and banged my head against the table, cursing.

Fuck, I observed. Now with much distress.

________________________________

A couple of transparent rubber tubes hung in front of me, intertwining with each other along their entire length, until they meet at a junction close to my wrist. Through a couple of minute slits cut into my skin, they slid into my body using the needles protruding from their ends, thereby mixing their contents into my blood-stream.

I could see the fluid that was traveling through those tubes, colourless, and as far as I could guess, odourless. Even with my superhuman senses I could not tell whether it was an acid or a base, but I had to take the risk. My escape from this twisted caricature of a laboratory depended on it.

So I flung my long hair across my face. A couple of times I missed, but the third time I was successful in making a few strands loop around the length of the tubes. I lunged at them in an instant, catching the spare ends with the front of my teeth, while the strap around my neck bit into my skin, making me bleed.

I raised my head as far as I could, before the bones of my neck screamed in distress, and ensnared the rest of the bundle in my mouth, pulling them till the tubes were close enough for me to bite onto.

With my newly developed and exceedingly sharp canines, I tore through the thin rubber with ease, making the liquid flowing inside spill out, some onto my mouth while the rest splattered across my bare chest. Ah saline, was the first thought that flashed across my mind as the taste of salt wetted my lips. I would have breathed a sign of relief if I could, fearful as I was of it being an acid, but I couldn't let those rubber tubes go. My work wasn't yet complete.

So I jerked my head to the right, causing a sharp pain to flare across my wrist as the needles tore free, followed by a dull ache and wetness as my blood intermixed with saline trickled down my fingers. Ignoring it, I began yanking my wrist completely free from those tubes, the pain caused by my actions would soon turn minuscule compared to the real agony that would follow.

I began turning and twisting my hand, using the saline water as a lubricant to negate the friction of the leather straps. I spat the torn tubes out, watching them swing to my either side while spilling their contents onto the floor. Then taking a deep breath, I began pulling.

A human hand is made up of numerous little bones which with sufficient pressure could be broken and rearranged as one desired, thereby aiding the wrist to escape practically any restrain… if one was prepared to pay the price.

Which I was.

So with enough force while twisting and turning, my hand came free with a snap and a scream. The cost of freedom included several broken bones, considerable loss of skin, and immeasurable agony. Without the lubrication from the saline water that I had spilled, and my own blood leaking from the torn slits on my wrist, the price would have been steeper. Still my right hand would be quite incapable of performing any sort of strenuous activities for the possible future, which as it seemed unfortunately included holding a weapon to protect myself from whoever this lab belonged to.

And as if lady misfortune hadn't already smiled at my due distress, the sound of footsteps coming from somewhere to my left, beyond a thickly stuffed wooden bookshelf, alerted me that my desire of some quality alone time to lick my literal wounds would be left quite unfulfilled. The shouting and curses that my inhuman hearing picked up from that particular direction, bespoked to me that my new guests were at least half a dozen in number, and the chunks and clanks that followed in their wake indicated that they were armed and armoured as well.

Speak of the Devil... I would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation if I could. To be reborn in a new world after a long life ill spent, only to die moments later, would have been quite a sick joke at someone else's expense, though for me being that someone was not what I had ever wished for.

"That's quite a bind, you find yourself in my friend," a voice suddenly spoke to my right, breaking me from my doomed musings and making my heart stop a beat.

I jerked my head to the direction of the voice, pushing the long locks away from my face with my mangled hand, and looked at the face of the man whose sudden appearance had gone completely unnoticed by my now superhuman senses.

And what a person he was.

Bald-headed and plain, with a smile gracing his lips, the man was dressed in what one could term a merchant's attire, with all its flashy coloured fabrics spun across its entire length. Reclining against the wall with a flute in one hand, which he spun on the tip of his fingers with leisure, while with his other hand he caressed the head of a partially melted child still stuck to his bindings.

"Do you perhaps require a hand?" He asked me, in a quite innocent voice, though his mirth in the situation as if sharing a sick joke with his confidant, was evident for all to see.

________________________________


End file.
